Does nobody frickin' learn from history? Really? We're doing this again? Okay, let's just get it over with. Hey guys, how are you all doing? Really, that's just great. I'm doing pretty great today, too, because I get high off of other people's stupidity. That's why I made that Lit Mobile episode, and don't worry.
I still have some followup episodes planned for that. So stay tuned. But today we're gonna be talking about another company that just does not seem to get it. OpenCore Computer launched a commercial Hackintosh. What's a Hackintosh? Quick lesson. A Hackintosh is a portmanteau of hack and Macintosh.
Apples' macOS system software is made to only run on Macs. But the Hackintosh community created ways to run that software on non-Apple hardware. If you're not selling the systems, generally, you won't have any legal issues with this, but commercial Hackintosh is where we hit the big problems.
That's what Psystar sold. They're defunct now. Anyway, back to OpenCore Computer, you can go to their website, open core.computer, to build your configuration, but wait, hang on. Did they just steal the name and logo from the OpenCore bootloader developers? Shameless. Well, anyway, let's look at their website. They have a single page that tries to sell the idea behind the computer.
At the bottom, you can configure a system macOS Catalina installed, using the OpenCore bootloader. Huh, they misspelled illegally, weird. There are three models, but only the Velociraptoris available on this day. If you ask me, the company's gonna get shut down before the Megalodon even releases. Place your bets now. If you max everything out, it'll cost you $4,819, if you pay the full amount.
By the way, their config wizard is tedious as (beeping). Now here's where I see the first red flag. Well, I saw a bunch already, but this is a real red flag. Because of the convoluted macOSend user license agreement, our payment provider options are limited. Thus, we've chosen to only accept Bitcoin payments currently. They even go on to imply this isn't a scam. Personally, I don't think this is a scam.
Well, at least yet. That's not the main thingI'm concerned about. The main thing I'm concerned about is that they're violating copyright law and stealing other Company's intellectual property. Pro-tip, don't do that. Now I'm no legal expert, but the macOS EULA stipulates you cannot redistribute, sell, or sub-license this software. And it seems like OpenCore Computer is trying to get around that by only accepting Bitcoin payments. I'm not exactly sure how that loophole works.
So we'll see how long that actually lasts. Also taking a look at the hero images on the website, the computer case looks Photoshopped. Knowing this company, it was probably with a pirated version of Photoshop. Anyway, the local brightness and aspect ratio doesn't match up between these two images.
And in case you're wondering, the computer case they'reusing is a Lian Li TU-150. Now here's a question I have received a million times. Krazy Ken, why doesn't Apple just allow other people in companies to install macOS on non-Apple hardware? It's a legit question. I get it. And we can go down a huge rabbit hole of reasons, but the best answer I can give is this. They already tried that and it sucked, financially.
There was a time where Apple allowed other vendors to sell their own computers,non-Apple computers, with Mac ROMs and macOS software, just like the SuperMac right here. And these computers were collectively known as Mac Clones. With the success of Windows, Microsoft was gaining tons of users.
This clearly demonstrated how successful their cross-platform strategy was. - Because of the competitive pressures, Apple is doing more than just upgrading its Macintosh operating system. It has begun to license the macOS and authorize the manufacture and sale of Macintosh clones. - The first official Mac clone launched on March 27, 1995.
It was a Radius System 100, and it featured a PowerPC601 with a clock speed of up to 110 megahertz and 264 megabytes of RAM. Over time, Apple actually lost money doing this, and they weren't gaining any more market share. So it totally wasn't worth it. Apple received $50 for each Mac clone sold.
There might've been some other fluctuations in that price depending on different agreements, but it was pretty much50 bucks per computer. And that was not enough to keep this plan going. So some changes needed to be made. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, he made a lot of changes with the company.
And one of them had to do with the Mac clones. - I went to the clone vendors, and I said, "Guys, we're gonna go broke doing this. "And if we go down the (bleeping) "the whole ecosystem will go down the (bleeping) "and you won't be here either.
"So we gotta fix this. "We'd like to sell you our software, "but you've gotta pay a fair price for it, "not an exorbitant price, "just a fair percentage of the costs." And we outlined what that was. We asked them to do that. I personally asked them to do this. And they basically told me to go pound sand. Being a man of perseverance, I asked five times over the next three weeks, each time we were told to go pound sand. We finally made the decisions we had to make.
- Ultimately, Steve Jobs skilled in the clone program. With the release of Mac OS 8, no existing clone vendors could sell computers with the newer operating system because they were only licensed to sell computers with system seven. Umax, however, obtained a license to ship Mac OS 8.
So they could still do this whole thing. But that license expired in 1998. After that, the Mac clone program shriveled and died. Shout out to my buddy, Steve, from Mac84 for helping me research the Macintosh clones. He's actually working on a much more in-depth video, which covers the cloning history. Plus he covers many other topics on his channel. So go check him out.
And there were other Mac clones before the officialMacintosh clone program. I actually showed one of these and many other rare Appleprototypes in this video, which you can watch with The Computer Clan YouTubechannel membership. So go check that out, too. So Apple already did try this, and we know history repeats itself if you don't learn from it, and they don't wanna godown that road again.
That's why they had to stop Psystar. And that's why they're gonna stop Open Computer as well. My bet is this is not gonna last more than a few months. And I'm totally cool with the Hackintosh community. Heck, I can't wait to try some Hackintosh stuff out myself. I think that'll be fun. And if you do that stuff, great, just don't sell those things.
So let me know in the comments below what you think about this whole mess, and if you wanna get some other goodies from myself and from the computer clan, feel free to hit the join button down below or use the link in the description so you can get access to all that cool stuff, and in doing so you will also be supporting the channel. So thank you very much. Also, if you liked the video, you know what to do. Thanks for sticking with me, catch the crazy, and pass it on.
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